Steve Hoffbeck, a long-time professor of history at Minnesota State University Moorhead, recently-retired, was born in Minnesota and grew up on the family’s dairy farm. His first book, The Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families told of the blessings, toil, and woes of farming (a Minnesota Book Award winner, 2001). His most recent book, “Colvill Smiled:” The Legend of the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Regiment at Gettysburg, tells the powerful Civil War stories of William Colvill and Martin Maginnis, officers of the First Minnesota Regiment. Hoffbeck has gathered the recollections, speeches, and writings of these two men from Red Wing and has woven their words into the narrative of the regiment’s legendary wartime deeds as they fought battles in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.